Preparing Your Clients for GEO

GEO is SEO for the AI era

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of optimizing content so that AI-powered search engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews — cite your website in their generated answers.

Traditional SEO gets you into the blue links. GEO gets you cited in the AI-generated answer above the blue links. Both matter, and they share many fundamentals, but GEO adds new considerations that most agencies aren't addressing yet.

Why agencies should care now

The window is narrow. Right now, fewer than 5% of businesses have optimized for AI search visibility. That means the bar is low — relatively small optimizations can have outsized impact. In 12–18 months, the market will catch up and the advantage will shrink.

For agencies, GEO is a new service to offer and a new differentiator in a crowded market. "We optimize your website for Google AND AI search" is a pitch your competitors aren't making yet.

What AI search engines look for

Citability

AI models cite sources that make clear, authoritative, factual statements. "Our tool runs audits in under 30 seconds across 5 categories" is more citable than "we deliver lightning-fast, comprehensive results."

Action: Audit your clients' website copy. Replace vague marketing language with specific, factual claims. Numbers, timeframes, and concrete features are citable. Adjectives are not.

Structured data

Schema markup gives AI crawlers machine-readable information they can extract confidently. A page with Product schema (name, price, features) is easier for a model to cite than a page where the same information is scattered through marketing copy.

Action: Implement schema markup across key pages. See our schema guide for agencies.

The llms.txt file

The llms.txt specification is an emerging standard for telling AI crawlers what your site is about. It's a plain-text file at /llms.txt that provides a structured summary — like a README for AI.

Action: Create an llms.txt file for your clients' websites. Include: what the business does, key services/products, pricing, contact info, and links to important pages.

Topic authority

AI models are more likely to cite sites with deep content on a specific topic. A dental practice with 20 pages about different procedures signals authority. A dental practice with 3 generic pages does not.

Action: Build content clusters. Create pillar pages for main topics and supporting pages for subtopics. Internal linking between them reinforces the topical authority signal.

Freshness

AI search engines value recent content. A blog post from 2024 about "SEO trends" is less likely to be cited than one from 2026. Dates in your content (publication dates, "last updated" dates) signal freshness.

Action: Add publication and update dates to all content. Update existing content regularly — even small updates with a new "updated" date signal freshness.

The GEO audit

Run through this checklist for each client:

1. Robots.txt — Are AI search crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) allowed? Use the AI Visibility Grader to check.
2. llms.txt — Does the site have one? Does it accurately describe the business?
3. Schema markup — Is there structured data on key pages? Check with the Meta Tag Analyzer.
4. Content clarity — Are key facts stated clearly in complete sentences, not just in images or PDFs?
5. Topic depth — How many pages cover the business's core topic?
6. Content freshness — When was the most recent content published or updated?
7. FAQ content — Are common questions answered on the site with FAQPage schema?

How to pitch GEO services

"When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity to recommend a [dentist/lawyer/plumber] in [city], your business should be cited in the answer. Right now, it isn't — because your website isn't optimized for AI search engines. We can fix that."

Show them a real example: search for their service on Perplexity or ChatGPT. If their competitor is cited and they aren't, the pitch writes itself.

The overlap with traditional SEO

Good news: 80% of GEO best practices overlap with good SEO. If you're already doing solid technical SEO, content strategy, and schema markup, you're most of the way there. The incremental GEO-specific work (llms.txt, AI crawler permissions, citability audit) adds 2–4 hours per client.

The 20% that's unique to GEO — content citability, llms.txt, AI crawler management — is your differentiator.

Run a free audit on any site to assess its current search readiness.